The device and techniques disclosed herein relate generally to transient voltage surge suppression.
At present, in industrial type applications, such protection is often provided by a power distribution panel having a suppression module included inside. This suppression module typically consists of metal oxide varistors (“MOV”), which provide the surge suppression function. However under certain fault conditions the coating on the MOVs can burn and/or the MOV may rupture causing fragments to be expulsed. To safeguard against these events a typical suppression module will contain some form of thermal disconnect component and special fusing components to open prior to the MOV rupturing. Additional electronics are also included to indicate whether either the thermal disconnect or the fusing has operated.
At present it is known to assemble the discrete components either on a printed circuit board or by means of some mechanical joining method, (e.g. attached individually or to a busbar) and then to enclose the assembly with a suitable enclosure which would prevent expulsion of fragments of a component should a catastrophic failure occur under fault conditions. In addition, the enclosure must also contain a fire should a component combust under fault conditions. These requirements require relatively expensive enclosures which in some cases may be filled with a flame/arc damping material such as sand. It has been known for the enclosure to be a significant portion of the total cost of the total module. Since the main components such as the MOV, fuse and thermal disconnect are all individual components special attention needs to be taken to ensure that the combination of the components will operate as required.
The exemplary embodiments of present disclosure address at least the problems discussed above.